Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday said the social media company is ending its fact-check program and replacing it with a community-driven system akin to that of Elon Musk’s X.
Zuckerberg cited the election as underlying the decision, calling it a “cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech.” Zuckerberg made the announcement in a video. “We’re going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X, starting in the U.S.”
The changes will impact Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram — which have billions of users — as well as Threads.
The systems put in place to moderate its platforms make too many mistakes, Zuckerberg stated.
Meta introduced its fact-checking program in 2016 as part of an effort to curb misinformation. The initiative was launched in response to criticism over Facebook’s role in spreading false claims during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. A 2023 statement from Meta said the fact-checking program had “expanded to include nearly 100 organizations working in more than 60 languages globally.”
The announcement came a day after Meta said former Ultimate Fighting Championship chief executive Dana White, a close ally of President-elect Donald Trump, would join its board, and shortly after former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg announced he was stepping down as president of global affairs.
Meta does plan to continue to moderate content related to drugs, terrorism, child exploitation, frauds and scams, Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, wrote in a post.
Facebook’s trust and safety content moderation team is also moving from California to Texas and other U.S. locations, Kaplan said.
Kate Gibson is a reporter for CBS MoneyWatch in New York, where she covers business and consumer finance.
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